THE KICKSTARTER LAUNCHES SEPTEMBER 5th!

(EDIT: Formerly September 1st, but after consulting with Make That Thing, we decided launching after the Labor Day holiday was a smarter window to start the campaign!)

Look, look! It’s scholar felis us’es! Actually, Rachel created these characters to serve as our avatars in the brand new in-universe Extras section of the upcoming Beyond the Western Deep: Volume 1 hardcover. There’s a lot of ground to cover here, so I’ll start at the beginning:

As of this page’s posting, we have exactly TWO WEEKS before the Kickstarter launches, so we’re going to spend the next few weekly updates sharing the campaign’s details with you, telling you about the various pledge tiers, and generally giving you all a preview of what to expect when we launch in a few weeks.

THE VOLUME 1 HARDCOVER IS THE FOCAL POINT OF THE KICKSTARTER

The hardcover edition of Beyond the Western Deep: Volume 1 began its life as a self-published limited run of 550 copies from PrintNinja, an offset printer that specializes in independent comics and board games. Rachel and I learned a lot about putting together a solid book and a great many of the technical details behind it. We created a book that we were proud of, that felt great to hold and even better to read through. It served us very well at conventions, and just looked GOOD. We often sold out of every copy we’d bring with us for the couple years we had them, and soon, all 550 were gone.

For our Kickstarter, the primary focus is going to be on hardcovers.

Wait, hardcovers? What’s with the plural?

THERE WILL BE A SPECIAL EDITION HARDCOVER AND A STANDARD HARDCOVER

The content of both books will be the same, but there will be two different covers: the standard hardcover you see above, and a special edition hardcover with different artwork and some special materials/techniques to give the cover a more premium feel.

While the Kickstarter is primarily about getting hardcovers into your hands, there’s a little something else you can look forward to as well:

ENAMEL PINS ARE PART OF THE KICKSTARTER!

Get ready, because Quin and Dak are coming at ya in pin form!

These soft enamel pins are still in the pre-production phase, but I wanted to share Rachel’s artwork that we’ll be basing the designs off of.

What else can you expect in the various pledge tiers?

  • A digital PDF version of Volume 1
  • Access to our community Discord server
  • All physical books come with a bookmark
  • A brand new 8×8 print
  • A hand-signed bookplate (signed by Rachel and me) for all special edition hardcovers
  • ARTIST TIERS!

RACHEL, JEROME, AND LEAH ALL HAVE THEIR OWN ORIGINAL ART TIERS

If you’ve ever wanted to own an original piece of artwork or commission your own artwork from our series artists, now is a great opportunity to do so.

Rachel will be taking a small number of commissions for smaller watercolor cards and a larger, more in-depth commission featuring a Western Deep character of the pledger’s choice, or an original character in the universe’s art style.

Jerome will be taking a pair of original digital commissions, where pledgers can work with Jerome to create a scene featuring characters from the Western Deep universe.

Leah will be offering up a one-of-a-kind 8×10″ watercolor featuring Janik from Beyond the Western Deep signed by the artist herself.

WHAT ABOUT STRETCH GOALS?

Honestly, we’ll be excited just to hit our goal (which is still TBD based on final quotes from the printers and vendors for the pledge rewards). But we’re hoping that we can work in a cool stretch goal or two that doesn’t require creating original content, and instead is more production-oriented. For example, one idea was adding ribbon bookmarks to all hardcover versions if we can pass a certain sales threshold. That’s a cool idea!

If you have any ideas, we’d love to hear them :)

Next week, we’re going to share the final Kickstarter pitch video and a brand new musical track by Nolan Markey that we commissioned for the Kickstarter video. It’s really quite something, and I’m sure you’ll all love it.

For guest art this week, I wanted to share one of many incredible Atari-esque pixel art pieces rendered by Holt5, this first one featuring Quinlan and Crim facing off during their tesque battle in Volume 1:

I love the old chunky, pixel-heavy look of older Atari and PC/Mac video games. Prince of Persia was a favorite of mine, and there was some excellent rotoscoping technique behind those gigantic pixels.

I can imagine this scene suggesting something more akin to Jordan Mechner’s previous title, Karateka, what with the focus on hand-to-hand combat. But either way, the classic video game receptors in my brain are firing on all cylinders looking at this great artwork. Wonderful job, Holt!

See you all next week!